Lee

On a similar line to this, WWE.com has a quick video up right now of (brief) clips of guys debuting in dark matches before the made it to TV. There's AJ doing a shooting star press on the night of the WCW/ECW Alliance merger, Miz doing a tag match against the Highlanders, Scott Hall in plain black tights and white boots in June '92 squashing Jim Powers, and Kurt Angle doing a leaping Olympic Slam in 1999. Teasingly short, but very cool to see.

I actually got back into watching the show every week when the Aces and Eights thing first started, but then it dragged on forever until they finally started revealing guys, and, aside from the predictable Bully Ray turn, each one was a fart wetter than the last.

I remember when they had a couple of handfuls of out of print shows available as .ISO downloads to burn yourself around the time Adam Pearce was in charge, at pretty reasonable prices. I was more than happy to throw them a few bucks and go that route rather than have to eBay or torrent shit, but then it just quietly died out and that was the end of it.

I'm not against Heat and Thunder going up as the "B-shows" of a giant era in wrestling, but for my own preference I just wish we'd get the rest of Prime Time first.

I never fully 'got' Low-Ki to be honest, because he was a guy I always *loved* watching in 3-ways, 4-ways and tags, but I often found my attention drifting in and out of most of his singles matches.

Does JBL leaving open up the glorious return of David Otunga? (I see him fitting in better on Raw with Booker taking the 'veteran' role on SmackDown. Or does Nigel McGuinness get an unexpected early call up?

It's true, according to his book. His adopted name was (and is) Richard Morgan Fliehr, but his birth name was Fred Phillips (his biological father was named Luther Phillips), Fred Demaree or Fred Stewart (his biological mother was listed with all three names). He was also born in Tennessee, so we can only imagine a world where Freddie 'The King' Demaree grew up idolising Jackie Fargo and snagged himself a token AWA World title reign after years of campaigning from Jerry Jarrett, much to the chagrin of would-be top star and real life rival Jumpin' Jerry Lawler. still embittered over Demaree's affair with Lawler's then-wife Kay in '81 and the nerve-touching chants of "Freddie's Kid!" aimed at young Brian Christopher.

This is a crazy thread to come up as I've literally been armchair booking the exact same period from Watts' departure. Interested to see how this turns out.

I do wish they'd dump stuff a bit more evenly throughout the month, you feel like you get a ton of stuff one week and then it goes barren for a little while. I mean, sure, you get more than enough to last the whole month, but I think if it was distributed a bit differently it would feel like a constant stream of things coming out. Anyway, they uploaded Episode 41 of Tuesday Night Titans last night. I don't know if that's a signifier that they'll be finishing off the run or not though, since it's one of three shows that were skipped during the original drop, rather than from the last batch (the final year or so). EDIT: They've uploaded a pile more TNT, so there's the answer. Although the sequence currently goes "53, 55, 56, 54, 57", with 56 and 54 both listed as November 1st, 1985.

I watched that Flair tag match and it tickled me to think about how if you'd been asked in 1991 to pick a future World Champion out of all the others guys involved, the answer wouldn't have been Scott Hall, Brian Pillman or but Bobby Eaton, but actually the sleazy 30-odd year old guy on the floor in the zebra print jacket who you've never seen have a match in his life. And he'd be a legitimate star, too! Wrestling is great.

I didn't see all of the Spring Break show but I liked more of what I saw than on the typically po-faced Evolve show (weird low-rent Undertaker bodybag angle aside). I mean, Glacier vs. Dink the Clown in a battle royal, VIRGIL running in wearing a Rey Mysterio mask that wasn't fooling anyone, and Marty Jannetty doing a Canadian Destroyer at 53!

Really puts things into perspective how SmackDown is a current show, their biggest non-Raw show, and it's taken them three years to actually upload the archive of it. Their rollout of content remains ungodly slow, regardless of how legitimate their reasons for that may be.

Seems to me like the Festival de Lucha match was cut down to the first fall, presumably to highlight Chris Jericho since he gets the win. Unless contemporary reports from those taping are inaccurate (by which I mean, I read the taping results online), Jericho's team lost. They don't report that it was 2/3 falls, though they also don't report Fit Finlay being at ringside or their being two referees either.

I mean... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceBmJ25YQ_k and... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCa6PC5bAUQ

For WCCW, some of their bigger shows would be tagged "Star Wars" (i.e. "Christmas Star Wars"). The AWA's biggest shows in terms of attendance would be the St. Paul Civic Center and the Rosemont Horizon, plus you could make a case for them sending title matches to big shows in Japan or Quebec, and Salt Lake City regularly did good numbers (just a shade under 10,000). They were also running the Cow Palace but the numbers were fairly anaemic.

Probably similar to why it took them a long time to put Raw 20 up, since there's a "Rock concert" in the main event of the show that now looks really weird - Rock comes out with a guitar, mic and stool set up in the ring, laughs at a picture of himself from 1996, then CM Punk comes out to stare at him, end of show. Rock signing "Wonderful Tonight" to Vickie Guerrero is what's been cut.

I think if we can believe that they couldn't get on pay-per-view because the people in charge paid little enough attention to not realise they weren't UFC, then it's not out of the realms of believablity that Disney, a company which happily allowed WCW to tape at their facilities, would at least consider the idea of getting into the wrestling business for themselves without looking specifically at the overall content of ECW, having presumably decided that they would be turned down by WCW and the WWF. Not saying I believe it outright, but not saying that I don't either.

I didn't mind the fans shouting "Ten!" during the count-outs, but I just wish they had enough of a filter to know what the line was between being cute and being obnoxious. Doing it in Dillinger's match - amusing enough to raise a chuckle, especially as it would come off like they were trying to trick Roode or hype up Tye. Doing it two matches later on the same show - okay, that's a bit weird. Stop it. Doing it the next night on a non-NXT show - shut the fuck up already, you unbearable cretins. You already had your fun with it, now stop ruining mine.

Why "expert" in quotation marks? Does Dave not fill your criteria for such an accolade?

I was watching the last two matches on demand today after tapping out during the live show, and I noticed how little time was left for the main event, especially with all the video packages, entrances, post-match, etc. At that point, I got to thinking about what did I want to see from the main event, and I just figured "You know, squash matches got Goldberg over, so wouldn't it be hilarious if he squashed Brock", AND THEN HE DID! I loved it, but I think it also helps that WWE have drummed all my genuine passion for their product out of me over the last couple of years, because for anyone who wants to complain that Brock could have given the rub to someone, and I don't disagree with that sentiment, what really is a "rub" in WWE terms these days? It's Kevin Owens beating John Cena, then losing to him a couple of times and slotting into the same spot he would have been in regardless of that feud. So I don't care. You could have put Braun over him, Cass, Cesaro, Rusev or anyone, but unless you treat THEM as special afterwards, and with all their TV time and 50/50 booking philosophies you know they wont, it doesn't matter. At least Goldberg is special.

Dave seemed to suggest recently that Randy Orton joining the Wyatt Family might stick as a turn if Undertaker is coming back for WrestleMania, since it would give him a safe opponent to work with.

I don't think we'll ever actually get all of them, because there's at least one tape with Japanese matches on it. I suppose they could always license it, but I figure they'd just skip that one.

Saturday Night I think would be the most likely since they already uploaded all those World Championship Wrestling shows. It'll be interesting to see where they go once they finish the Raw and SmackDown archives, back to Prime Time I'd guess?

I know this isn't exactly what you asked, but Chris Benoit did "the big three of the big three" in a six-month span - Starrcade in December 1999, the Tokyo Dome in January 2000 and WrestleMania in April 2000.

"I’m not hampered by things like journalism or giving a shit about accuracy." - Scott Keith, published author.